Bruce Langford's
Mindfulness Mode Podcast

347 Muse Brain-Sensing Headband Creator, Chris Aimone

August 12, 2018 by Bruce Langford

Chris Aimone is an inventor, an engineer, and a visionary. The Muse, brain-sensing headband for meditation is a creation of the company he co-founded called Interaxon. Chris' creative and design practices span many fields including architecture, alternative energy, augmented reality, imaging, music, and robotics. Fueled by a masters level education in engineering and computer science from the University of Toronto.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

My Mother.

Effect on Emotions

I would say I'm a much happier person now as a result of being introduced to mindfulness. I think this really comes from understanding myself that much better and understanding how to live in a way where I don't have as much conflict with myself.

[Mindfulness has given me] the capacity to really understand how other people are experiencing things. This makes for a much more frictionless flow in life. It feels great.

Thoughts on Breathing

The breath is fascinating. I've recently played more with intentional breath work where breath is sort of an energetic tool to influence your nervous system.

In my mindfulness practice, just recognizing that there is an automatic function of your breathing and a conscious aspect of breathing and simply watching your breath really isn't so easy.

There is a really amazing rabbit hole there just to discover what it's like to try to simply observe the breath and not influence it. It's a beautiful biofeedback tool.

And so Muse is a biofeedback tool, but actually, the practice of meditation is like deep biofeedback at work because of the things that we use to anchor our attention.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

Like I said in the beginning, mindfulness for me is all about awareness and a big part of that is self-awareness. I think for an individual who might be a bully, for example, growing some deeper self-awareness, really provides an opportunity to understand what's happening and how your actions are being received.

[Also], what those actions are and what they're related to in your own emotional experience. I think being aware of something is the first step in change. If you can't see what's happening there can be no interest in being any different.

Seeing what's happening provides an opportunity to become interested and motivated to do things differently. That in itself doesn't allow you to change necessarily, but it certainly can make you aware of what's happening.

So I think that's a really important first step is just expanding some inner awareness. You can actually see what's happening emotionally and how it's manifesting in action, even as a retrospective.

So I think doing any kind of inner practice, you know, out of context where you're just with yourself can be perhaps simple enough.

The things that come up in meditation seem to be better received and you can hear them more clearly. And so that's the really great first step in that someone who is being bullied, it's both an inner and an outer awareness that comes into play.

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